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Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

Centrifugal pumps, pulsations, numerical simulations

Project description

Cooperative project: “Development of fundamentals for variably operating hydraulic pump systems in flexible power plants II”; subproject TU-Dortmund: “Pressure pulsations in variably operating pump systems”

Due to an increasing amount of renewables in the German energy mix current and future requirements for the development of steam power plants are not only improving efficiency or reducing CO2 emissions. It is also of utter importance to allow for flexible operation of gas- and coal-fueled power plants in order to balance the variable supply of renewable energy systems.

The TU Dortmund subproject’s main objective is the development of a one-dimensional model for the fluid dynamic simulation of pressure pulsations within and around multistage centrifugal pumps in the time domain.
Based on the modelling approach for single stage centrifugal pumps developed in a previous project, a model structure is to be developed which quantifies the relevant influencing factors on the acoustic transmission behaviour as well as the excitation parameters of multi stage pumps. The transfer behaviour is the property of the pump to reflect or transmit incoming sound waves. The excitation parameters in turn
determine the property to actively excite sound waves. In order to validate the model and to quantify the necessary model parameters, experimental investigations on multistage centrifugal pumps are planned.


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Cooperation / Funding

This project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and KSB SE & Co. KGaA and is being carried out in cooperation with the following partners: Institut für Fluidsystemtechnik TU Darmstadt, Institut für Energietechnik TU Dresden, Lehrstuhl für Stömungsmechanik und Strömungsmaschinen TU Kaiserslautern und KSB SE & Co. KGaA